Ripley Under Ground (17 page)

The times that Heloise came most alive to Tom were when she flew into a temper. She had tempers and tempers. Tom did not count the tempers over a delayed delivery of something from Paris, when Heloise swore (untruthfully) that she would never patronize such-and-such a shop again. The more serious tempers were caused by boredom or a minor assault upon her ego, and could occur if a guest had bested or contradicted her in a discussion at the table. Heloise would control herself until the guest or guests had departed—which was something—but once the people had gone, she would walk up and down the floor ranting, throwing pillows at the walls, shouting, “
Fous-moi la paix!—Salauds!
” (“Get the hell out of here!— Slobs!”) with Tom as her only audience. Tom would say something soothing and irrelevant, Heloise would go limp, a tear would roll out of each eye, and she could be laughing a moment later. Tom supposed that was Latin. It certainly wasn’t English.

Tom worked for an hour or so in the garden, then read a bit in
Les Armes Secrètes
by Julio Cortazar. Then he went up and did the last work on his portrait of Mme. Annette—this was her day off, Thursday. At 6 p.m. Tom asked Heloise to come in and look at it.

“It’s not bad, you know? You have not worked too much on it. I like that.”

Tom was pleased by this. “Don’t mention it to Madame.” He put it in a corner to dry, face to the wall.

Then they got ready to go to the Berthelins. Dress was informal. Levi’s would do. Vincent was another husband who worked in Paris and came to his country house at weekends.

“What has Papa to say?” Tom asked.

“He is glad I am back in France.”

Papa didn’t like him much, Tom knew, but Papa had a vague feeling that Heloise neglected him. Bourgeois virtue was at war with a nose for character, Tom supposed. “And Noëlle?” Noëlle was a favorite friend of Heloise who lived in Paris.

“Oh, the same. Bored, she says. She never likes the autumn.”

The Berthelins, though quite well off, deliberately roughed it in the country, with an outside john, and no hot water in the kitchen sink. Hot water was made in a kettle on the stove which burnt wood. Their guests, the Cleggs, the English couple, were about fifty, the same age as the Berthelins. Vincent Berthelin’s son, whom Tom had not met before, was a dark-haired young man of twenty-two (Vincent told Tom his age in the kitchen, when he and Tom were drinking Ricards, and Vincent was doing the cooking), living with a girlfriend now in Paris, and on the brink of abandoning his architectural studies at the Beaux Arts, which had Vincent in a tizzy. “
The girl is not worth it!
” Vincent stormed at Tom. “It is the English influence, you know?” Vincent was a Gaullist.

The dinner was excellent, chicken, rice, salad, cheese, and apple tart made by Jacqueline. Tom’s mind was on other things. But he was pleased, pleased to the point of smiling, because Heloise was in good spirits, talking about her Greek adventures, and at the last they all sampled the ouzo Heloise had brought.

“Disgusting taste, that ouzo! Worse than Pernod!” said Heloise at home, brushing her teeth at the basin in her bathroom. She was already in her nightdress, a short blue thing.

In his bedroom, Tom was putting on his new pajamas from London.

“I’m going down to get some champagne!” Heloise called.

“I’ll get it,” Tom hurried into his slippers.

“I have to get this taste out. Besides I want some champagne. You would think the Berthelins were paupers, the things they serve to drink.
Vin ordinaire!
” She was going down the stairs.

Tom intercepted her.

“I shall get it,” Heloise said. “Get some ice.”

Tom somehow didn’t want her to go into the cellar. He went on to the kitchen. He had just pulled an ice tray out, when he heard a scream—a muffled scream because of the distance, but Heloise’s scream, and a terrible one. Tom dashed across the front hall.

There was a second scream, and he collided with her in the spare loo.

“Mon dieu! Someone has hanged himself down there!”

“Oh, Christ!” Tom half-supported Heloise and guided her up the stairs.

“Don’t go down, Tome! It is horrible!”

It was Bernard, of course. Tom was trembling as he walked up the stairs with her, she talking in French and he in English.

“Promise me you won’t go down! Call the police, Tome!”

“All right, I’ll call the police.”

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know.”

They went into Heloise’s bedroom.

“Stay here!” Tom said.

“No, don’t leave me!”

“I insist!” Tom said in French, and ran out and down the stairs. A straight scotch was the best thing, he thought. Heloise hardly drank spirits, so it ought to help her at once. Then a sedative. Tom ran back upstairs with the bottle and a glass from the bar cart. He poured half a glassful, and when Heloise hesitated, drank some himself, then put the glass between her lips. Her teeth were chattering.

“You will call the police?”

“Yes!” At least this was suicide, Tom thought. That ought to be provable. It wasn’t murder. Tom sighed, shuddering, almost as shaky as Heloise. She was sitting on the edge of the bed. “How about the champagne? A lot of it.”

“Yes.
Non!
You must not go down there! Telephone the police!”

“Yes.” Tom went down the stairs.

He went into the spare loo, hesitated just an instant at the open doorway—the cellar light was still on—then started down the steps. A shock went through him at the sight of the dark, hanging figure, head askew. The rope was short. Tom blinked. There seemed to be no feet. He went closer.

It was a dummy.

Tom smiled, then he laughed. He slapped the limp legs—which were nothing but empty trousers, the trousers of Bernard Tufts. “
Heloise!
” he yelled, running back up the stairs, not caring if he might waken Mme. Annette. “Heloise, it’s a
dummy
!” he said in English. “It’s not real!
C’est un mannequin!
You mustn’t be afraid!”

It took a few seconds to convince her. It was a joke that perhaps Bernard had played—perhaps even Christopher, Tom added. At any rate, he had felt the legs, and he was sure.

Gradually, Heloise became angry, which was a sign of recovery. “What stupid jokes these English play! Stupid! Imbecilic!”

Tom laughed with relief. “I’m going down to get the champagne! And the ice!”

Tom went down again. The dummy hung from a belt which Tom recognized as one of his own. A hanger supported the dark gray jacket, the trousers were buttoned onto a button of the jacket, and the head was a gray rag, tied at the neck with a string. Tom got a chair quickly from the kitchen—happily Mme. Annette had not awakened in all this—and returned to the cellar and took the thing down. The belt had hung from a nail in a rafter. Tom dropped the empty clothes on the floor. Then he chose a champagne quickly. He removed the hanger from the jacket, and also took the belt with him. He managed to take the ice bucket from the kitchen also, and to turn out the lights, and then he went upstairs.

15

T
om awakened just before seven. Heloise was sleeping soundly. Tom got gently out of bed, and took his dressing gown, which was hanging in Heloise’s bedroom.

Mme. Annette might be up. Tom went quietly down the stairs. He wanted to remove Bernard’s suit from the cellar before Mme. Annette found it. The stain of the spilt wine and Murchison’s blood, Tom saw now, was not serious. If a technician examined it for blood, he would no doubt find traces, but Tom was optimistic enough to think this would not happen.

He unbuttoned the jacket from the trousers. A piece of white paper fluttered down, a note from Bernard, written in his tall pointed hand:

I hang myself in effigy in your house. It is Bernard Tufts that I hang, not Derwatt. For D. I do penance in the only way I can, which is to kill the self I have been for the last five years. Now to continue and try to do my work honestly in what is left of my life.

B.T.

Tom had an impulse to crumple the note and destroy it. Then he folded it, and stuck it in a pocket of his dressing gown. He might need it. Who knew? Who knew where Bernard was and what he was doing? He shook out Bernard’s crumpled suit, and tossed the rag in a corner. He’d send the suit to the cleaners. No harm in that. Tom started to take it to his room, then decided to leave it on the hall table where he put clothes for Mme. Annette to take to the cleaners.

“Bonjour, M. Tome!” Mme. Annette said from the kitchen. “Again you are up early! Mme. Heloise also? Would she like her tea?”

Tom went to the kitchen. “I think she wants to sleep this morning. She should sleep as late as she wishes. But I’d like some coffee now, please.”

Mme. Annette said she would bring it up to him. Tom went upstairs and dressed. He wanted to take a look at the grave in the woods. Bernard might have done something odd—opened it partly, God knew what—maybe even buried himself in it.

After his coffee, he went downstairs. The sun was hazy and hardly up, the grass wet with dew. Tom idled by his shrubs, not wanting to make a beeline for the grave, in case Heloise or Mme. Annette was looking out a window. Tom did not look back at the house, because he believed one person’s eye attracted the eye of another.

The grave was just as he and Bernard had left it.

Heloise did not awaken until after ten, and Mme. Annette told Tom, who was in his workroom then, that Mme. Heloise wanted to see him. Tom went into her bedroom. She was having her tea in bed.

She said, chewing grapefruit, “I do not like the jokes of your friends.”

“There won’t be any more. I removed the clothes—from the cellar. Don’t think anymore about that. Would you like to go to a nice place for lunch? Somewhere along the Seine? A late lunch?”

She liked this idea.

They found a restaurant new to them in a small town to the south, not on the Seine as it happened.

“Shall we go away somewhere? To Ibiza?” Heloise asked.

Tom hesitated. He would love to go somewhere by boat, take all the luggage he wanted, books, a record player, paints, and drawing pads. But it would look like an evasion, he felt, to Bernard, to Jeff and Ed, and to the police—even if they knew where he was going. “I will think about it. Maybe.”

“Greece left an unpleasant taste. Like the ouzo,” Heloise said.

Tom was in the mood for a lovely snooze after lunch. So was Heloise. They would sleep in her bed, she said, until they woke up, or until time for dinner. Unplug the telephone in Tom’s room, so it would only ring downstairs, and Mme. Annette would answer it. It was at moments like these, Tom thought, as he drove lazily back through the woods toward Villeperce, that he enjoyed being jobless, rather well-off, and married.

Tom was certainly not prepared for what he saw as soon as he opened the front door with his key. Bernard was sitting in one of the yellow straight chairs, facing the door.

Heloise did not see Bernard at once, and said, “Tome, chéri, can you bring me some Perrier and ice? Oh, I am so sle-epy!” Heloise fell into Tom’s arms, and was surprised to find him tense.

“Bernard’s here. You know, the Englishman I mentioned.” Tom walked into the living room. “Hello, Bernard. How are you?” Tom could not quite extend a hand, but he tried to smile.

Mme. Annette came in from the kitchen. “Ah, M. Tome! Mme. Heloise! I did not hear the car. I must be growing deaf. M. Bernard has returned.” Mme. Annette seemed flustered.

Tom said as calmly as he could, “Yes. Good. I was expecting him,” though he had told Mme. Annette he wasn’t sure Bernard would come back, he remembered.

Bernard stood up. He needed a shave. “Pardon me for returning unannounced.”

“Heloise, this is Bernard Tufts—a painter who lives in London. My wife, Heloise.”

“How do you do?” Bernard said.

Heloise stood where she was. “How do you do?” she replied in English.

“My wife’s a little tired.” Tom walked toward her. “Want to go upstairs—or stay with us?”

With a motion of her head, Heloise asked Tom to come with her.

“Back in a moment, Bernard,” Tom said, and followed her.

“Is that the one who played the trick?” Heloise asked when they were in her bedroom.

“I’m afraid so. He’s rather eccentric.”

“What is he doing here? I don’t like him. Who is he? You never mentioned him before. And he’s wearing your clothes?”

Tom shrugged. “He’s a friend of some friends of mine in London. I’m sure I can persuade him to take off this afternoon. He probably needs some extra money. Or clothes. I’ll ask him.” Tom kissed her cheek. “Get into bed, darling. I’ll see you soon.”

Tom went to the kitchen and asked Mme. Annette to take up Heloise’s Perrier.

“M. Bernard will be here for dinner?” asked Mme. Annette.

“I don’t think so. But we shall be in. Something simple. We had a big lunch.” Tom went back to Bernard. “Were you in Paris?”

“Yes, Paris.” Bernard was still standing.

Tom didn’t know what tack to take. “I found your effigy downstairs. It gave my wife quite a shock. You shouldn’t play tricks like that—with women in the house.” Tom smiled. “By the way, my housekeeper took your suit to be cleaned and I’ll see that you get it in London—or wherever you are. Sit down.” Tom sat down on the sofa. “What’re your plans?” It was like asking an insane man how he felt, Tom thought. Tom was uneasy, and he felt worse when he realized that his heart was beating rather fast.

Bernard sat down. “Oh—” Long pause.

“Not going back to London?” In desperation, Tom took a cigar from the box on the coffee table. It was enough to gag him just now, but did it matter?

“I came to talk to you.”

“All right. What about?”

Another silence, and Tom was afraid to break it. Bernard might have been groping in clouds, infinite clouds of his own thoughts in the last days. It was as if he were trying to hunt down one fleecy little sheep amid a gigantic flock, Tom felt. “I have all the time you want. You’re among friends, Bernard.”

“It’s quite simple. I must start my life over again. Cleanly.”

“Yes, I know. Well, you can.”

“Does your wife know—about my forging?”

Tom welcomed this logical question. “No, of course not. No one knows. No one in France.”

“Or about Murchison?”

“I told her Murchison was missing. And that I dropped him at Orly.” Tom spoke softly, in case Heloise might be in the hall upstairs, listening. But he knew voices did not carry well from the living room, up the faraway curve of the stairs.

Bernard said somewhat irritably, “I really can’t talk with other people in the house. Like your wife. Or the housekeeper.”

“All right, we can go somewhere.”

“No.”

“Well, I can hardly ask Mme. Annette to leave. She runs his place. Want to take a walk? There’s a quiet café—”

“No, thanks.”

Tom leaned back on the sofa with his cigar, which now smelled like a house burning down. Usually he liked the smell. “By the way, I’ve heard nothing from the English inspector since I saw you. Or the French.”

Bernard showed no reaction. Then he said, “All right, let’s take a walk.” He stood up and looked at the French windows. “Out the back way, perhaps.”

They walked out, onto the lawn. Neither had put on a topcoat and it was chilly. Tom let Bernard go where he wished, and Bernard drifted toward the woods, toward the lane. Bernard walked slowly, a bit unsteadily. Was he weak from not having eaten, Tom wondered? Soon they were passing the spot where Murchison’s corpse had been. Tom felt fear, a fear that made the hair on his neck and behind his ears prickle. It was not a fear of that spot, Tom realized, but a fear of Bernard. Tom kept his hands free, and walked a little to one side of Bernard.

Then Bernard slowed and turned around, and they began walking back toward the house.

“What’s on your mind?” Tom asked.

“Oh, I—I don’t know where this thing’s going to end. It’s already caused a man’s death.”

“Well—regrettable, yes. I agree. But really nothing to do with you, is it? Since you’re not painting any more Derwatts, the new Bernard Tufts can start over—cleanly.”

No reply from Bernard.

“Did you ring Jeff or Ed when you were in Paris?”

“No.”

Tom hadn’t troubled to buy any English newspapers, and Bernard perhaps hadn’t troubled, either. Bernard’s anxieties were within himself. “If you’d like to, you can ring Cynthia from the house. You can do it from my room.”

“I spoke to her from Paris. She doesn’t want to see me.”

“Oh.” That was the trouble. That was the last straw, Tom supposed. “Well, you can always write her. That may be better. Or see her when you go back to London. Storm her door!” Tom laughed.

“She said no.”

Silence.

Cynthia wanted to keep clear of it, Tom supposed. Not that she mistrusted Bernard’s intention of stopping the forgeries—no one could doubt Bernard when he stated something—but she’d had enough. Bernard’s hurt was beyond Tom’s grasp, for the moment. They were standing on the stone terrace outside the French windows. “I’ve got to go in, Bernard. I’m freezing. Come in.” Tom opened the doors.

Bernard came in, too.

Tom ran up to see Heloise. He was still rigid with cold, or fear. Heloise was in her bedroom, sitting on her bed, sorting snapshots and postcards.

“When is he leaving?”

“Darling—it’s his girlfriend in London. He rang her from Paris. She doesn’t want to see him. He’s unhappy and I can’t just ask him to leave. I don’t know what he’s going to do. Darling, would you like to visit your parents for a few days?”

“
Non!
”

“He wants to talk to me. I’m only hoping he’ll get at it soon.”

“Why can’t you put him out? He is not your friend. Also he is mad!”

Bernard stayed.

THEY HAD NOT FINISHED
dinner when the front doorbell sounded. Mme. Annette answered it, and returned and said to Tom:

“It is two
agents
of police, M. Tome. They would like to speak with you.”

Heloise gave a sigh of impatience, and threw her napkin down. She had detested sitting at the table, and now she stood up. “Again some intrusions!” she said in French.

Tom had stood up, too.

Only Bernard seemed unperturbed.

Tom went into the living room. It was the same pair of agents who had visited him Monday.

“We are sorry to disturb you, m’sieur,” said the older man, “but your telephone is not working. We have reported it.”

“Really?” The telephone’s nonfunctioning happened, in fact, every six weeks or so, inexplicably, but now Tom wondered if Bernard had done something odd, like cut the line. “I was not aware of it. Thank you.”

“We have been in touch with the English investigator. Rather he has been in touch with us.”

Heloise came in, out of both curiosity and anger, Tom supposed. Tom introduced her, and the officers gave their names again, Commissaire Delaunay, and the other name Tom missed.

Delaunay said, “Now it is not merely M. Murchison but the painter Derwatt who is missing. The English investigator Webstair, who also tried to ring you this afternoon, would like to know if you have heard from either of them.”

Tom smiled, actually a little amused. “I have never met Derwatt, and he certainly does not know me,” Tom said, just as Bernard came into the room. “And I have had no word from M. Murchison, I regret to say. May I present Bernard Tufts, an English friend. Bernard, two gentlemen of the police force.”

Bernard mumbled a greeting.

Bernard’s name did not mean anything to the French police, Tom noticed.

“Even the people who own the gallery where Derwatt now has an exhibition do not know where Derwatt is,” said Delaunay. “It is astounding, this.”

It was indeed odd, but Tom could not help them at all.

“Do you by any chance know the American, M. Murchison?” Delaunay asked Bernard.

“No,” Bernard said.

“Or you, madame?”

“No,” Heloise said.

Tom explained that his wife had just returned from Greece, but he had told her about M. Murchison’s visit and his disappearance.

The officers looked as if they did not know what move to make next. Delaunay said, “Because of the circumstances, M. Reeply, we have been asked by Inspector Webstair to make a search of your house. A formality, you understand, but necessary. We might come across a clue. I speak of M. Murchison, of course. We must aid our English
confrères
all we can!”

“But certainly! Would you like to begin now?”

It was rather dark, as far as the outdoors was concerned, but the police said they would begin now, and continue tomorrow morning. Both officers stood on the stone terrace, looking longingly, Tom felt, at the dark garden and the woods beyond.

They went over the house, under Tom’s guidance. They were first interested in Murchison’s bedroom, the one Chris had used afterward. Mme. Annette had emptied the wastebasket. The officers looked into drawers, all of which were empty except for two bottom drawers of a chest, or
commode
as the French called it, which contained bedspreads and a couple of blankets. There was no sign of Murchison or Chris. They looked into Heloise’s bedroom. (Heloise was downstairs in a repressed fury, Tom knew.) They looked into Tom’s atelier, even picked up one of his saws. There was an attic. The light had burnt out, and Tom had to get a lightbulb and a flashlight from downstairs. The attic was dusty. There were chairs under cloth covers, and an old sofa that Tom and Heloise had not removed from previous tenants. The policemen also looked behind things with the aid of their own torches. They were looking for something larger then a clue, Tom supposed, absurd as the idea might be that he would leave a corpse behind a sofa.